


then I pick up the pieces and run

by stolemyslumber



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-23
Updated: 2012-01-23
Packaged: 2017-10-30 00:08:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/325615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stolemyslumber/pseuds/stolemyslumber
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ray's chasing Brad. No, wait. Brad's leading Ray. No, wait.</p>
            </blockquote>





	then I pick up the pieces and run

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [lakeeffectgirl](http://lakeeffectgirl.livejournal.com/) for beta-reading!
> 
> Title from "SOG Burning in Hell" by Steel Train.

*

 

“You’re getting lazy,” Colbert says, grin audible through the phone line. “Can’t catch a clue, Agent Person?”

Ray grits his teeth. “How the fuck did you get this number?”

“Wrong question,” Colbert says, and then the line goes dead.

 

*

 

His phone tells him it’s six o’clock, but it feels later. Colbert’s taken him across three time zones and seven states in the past week, always too far ahead to catch but close enough that Ray keeps trying. Ray’s lasted longer than anyone else who’s been assigned to Colbert, but that doesn’t mean he’s any closer to catching him.

At six fourteen, Ray’s phone lights up with an incoming call. Unknown. Of course.

“Did I wake you up?” Colbert asks when Ray picks up. “Because I can call back later.”

“No,” Ray says, and he’s too tired to care that it comes out kind of obviously desperate. “I wasn’t sleeping.”

He sits up, squinting around the room. He thinks about turning on the lamp on the bedside table, but the sun’s already starting to come up, filtering in through the half-open curtains.

“The Super 8 in Jacksonville has better pillows than the Days Inn,” Colbert says, like he’s telling Ray a secret. He’s telling Ray he knows where Ray is staying, but he always seems to know that.

“I don’t think it’s the pillows,” Ray says. Colbert doesn’t say anything. Maybe he’s too busy being proud of himself for being the cause of Ray’s insomnia. “Any other suggestions?”

“Well, if you were staying where I’m staying, I could bring you a glass of warm milk,” Colbert says, sounding half-serious.

“What, from room service?” The sheets twist around Ray’s ankles as he rolls onto his stomach.

Colbert says, “No,” and Ray stops in the middle of kicking the blankets off.

“No,” he echoes. He filters through a mental map of hotels. There are a handful of options that fit -- a microwave but no room service, within an hour’s drive -- and Ray shouldn’t jump to conclusions. But he’s tired, and he’s been playing this game like he’s got a lot to lose, when really he doesn’t anymore. “Really, Colbert? All those hotels, and you picked the one in _Bald Knob_? That place is a dump.”

“They allow pets, Ray,” Colbert says, like sleeping on a mattress that’s probably infested with fleas is a good thing. “How could I pass that up? Not that I’ll be here for much longer.”

Of course. He knows Colbert would be moving on whether Ray had guessed or not. But knowing he’s forty-five minutes away and still untouchable kind of makes Ray want to bury his face in his lumpy-as-fuck pillow and give up. There’s no way he can keep up the chase without at least a little sleep.

“How ‘bout I give you a head start,” Ray says, even though they both know Colbert already has one.

“Generous,” Colbert says, playing along. “Want me to sing you a lullaby?”

“Fuck you,” Ray says, but there’s no heat behind it.

“Goodnight, Ray.”

 

*

 

“--one way ticket on a westbound train, see how far --”

A week ago, Ray had woken up to a voicemail that consisted entirely of Colbert singing the first verse and chorus of “Hotel California.” His phone hadn’t rung, and he hadn’t had any missed calls, but of course the T-Mobile voicemail system would have been easy work for the best working hacker in the country.

Ray’s phone rings this time, and Colbert starts crooning into Ray’s ear the moment he picks up.

Ray pulls off onto the shoulder, ignoring the cars honking. “Easy on the brakes there, Agent,” Colbert says mockingly. “Wouldn’t want to damage FBI property.”

“This car has a hundred fucking thousand miles on it, nobody cares what I do with it,” Ray snaps. “Also, you hate --”

There’s a moment where everything comes into focus and he thinks, _oh. Shouldn’t have said that out loud_. He should finish the sentence with something other than country music, pretend he meant the FBI or trains or Josh Ray Person. By the low, pleased laugh in his ear, it’s too fucking late for that.

“How many copies of my file do you _have_ , Person?” Colbert asks. He sounds delighted. “You know half that shit isn’t true, right?” Then he hangs up again.

Ray tosses his phone into the passenger seat and thumps his forehead against the steering wheel. He should know how this works by now. Colbert only gives him clues if both of them are pretending they aren’t clues. Ray knows Colbert wouldn’t be singing a country song unless it meant something. He just can’t say that out loud. At least Colbert had been amused at Ray breaking the rules.

 

*

 

“You’re getting warmer,” Colbert says, but the derision in his voice makes it clear that it’s a lie.

It’s not like it’s Ray’s fault. He’d been content to follow his own instincts and let HQ keep brushing off any headway he made as dumb luck. But Fenton’s taken a personal interest in the case, probably because whoever’s dick he’s sucking this month took an interest in it. God only knows why.

Yeah, Colbert’s outmaneuvered them for almost three years now, and has taken to taunting them by hacking the FBI website and giving the homepage redesigns that might politely be described as “creative.” Ray knows Colbert has the skills to wreak some serious havoc, but nothing he’s done has ever hurt anyone, and he’s never given any indication that he plans to change that.

But someone other than Ray has decided to give a shit about Colbert’s whereabouts, so for the past two weeks Ray’s been dealing with Fenton trying to backseat drive. Ray’s been forced on wild goose chases, always heading in the wrong direction, forced to ask for permission to follow every lead like a newbie straight out of Quantico. And now Colbert’s teasing him about it.

“Don’t be an asshole,” Ray says. He pulls out of the gas station parking lot and back onto I-35. “This isn’t fun for me, either.”

“I’ve been checked into this hotel for a goddamn week,” Colbert says. “I haven’t been this bored in months.”

Ray knows that isn’t aimed at him directly, but. Fuck. Ray can’t catch Colbert because he’s always on the move. Ray’s spent more than one late-night drive entertaining theories about whether Colbert even needs to sleep. One hotel, one street, one city for a _week_. Jesus. “You must be going crazy,” he says, and he means to just _say_ it, but it comes out teasing. It would almost be commiserating, without the edge of sarcasm there.

“Without you two steps -- well, maybe three --”

“Hey!”

“Okay, okay,” Colbert says, “two steps behind me all the time? On Tuesday, I watched nine episodes of Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman. Wednesday, I marathoned the Die Hard movies and paid a kid from room service fifty bucks to bring me crab cakes and a milkshake from a place downtown. Yesterday, I made a blanket fort between the beds. I’m pretty sure the maids opened the door this morning and walked right back out. So. A little crazy, yeah.”

This is more than he’s ever heard Brad talk before. Brad seems to realize it at the same time Ray does, and Ray scrambles to think of something to keep him talking.

“What kind of milkshake?” he asks, which is dumb enough that he half expects Brad to give up on him.

“Mint chocolate chip,” Brad says after a long pause. “See you soon, Ray.” He hangs up.

Ten minutes later, Ray gets a call from Jo at HQ to inform him that he won’t be meeting three new team members in Wichita to go over Brad’s file, because all three of them have been reassigned to the Dakota bomber case. Up until five minutes ago, there had been nothing new on it for over a month. Now they’ve got a new lead that might actually lead to an arrest. All thanks to what Jo calls an anonymous tip and Ray calls making a u-turn and heading back toward the exit for I-44, because he’s officially back in the game.

 

*

 

The blanket fort’s still up when the manager lets him in to Brad’s room. Nobody remembers Brad as anything other than tall, so he must have had some sort of disguise. Maybe just a hat, though. He won’t have anything concrete until he checks the security tape.

He ducks under the sheet that’s hanging off the overhead light and into the tent. There’s a pink bejeweled cell phone sitting on the nightstand. It rings as he goes to pick it up.

“Did you miss me?” Brad asks cheerfully. There’s noise in the background, but nothing Ray can pinpoint until he hears the echo of the clock tower striking three on the other end of the line.

“I’m sure the maids won’t,” Ray says dryly, but he can’t quite keep the excitement out of his own voice. He steps out from under the sheets. “Let me ask you, Brad,” he says, crossing to the open window. This has gotten pretty fucking out of hand. “Do these jeans make my ass look big?”

Brad laughs out loud. “Why don’t you turn around and let me see?”

“Not a chance,” Ray says. He hears an engine roar to life. A bike, which he’s known all along, no matter what obnoxious muscle cars HQ keeps insisting Brad’s made off with. He scans the buildings across from the hotel. Between two office buildings, just barely visible, there’s a parking garage. A bike on top, black and green, with a tall figure climbing onto it. “Nice,” Ray says, not even trying to censor himself. He’s not sure if he’s talking about the bike or its rider or the fucking blanket fort.

Brad’s got both arms up, and Ray realizes exactly why a second later. “Oh, _those_ jeans,” Brad says. His voice is low, barely audible over the hum of the bike. Sunlight glints off the binoculars as he talks. “Those jeans make your ass look amazing.”

Ray raises a middle finger up over his head. The last thing he hears before dead air is Brad’s laugh.

 

*

 

He knows, deep down, that he’s not going to catch Brad unless Brad lets him. If the playing field were even, things might be different. But Brad’s got endless resources and Ray has nothing but a beat-to-shit Denali and HQ swinging between breathing down his neck and ignoring his requisitions.

It’s Brad’s game. Ray’s pretty familiar with the rules, at this point, and he figured out a while ago that it’s not really about winning. The one thing he hasn’t figured out is whether Brad’s going to let him catch up. When he’s exhausted and wired on enough caffeine to give him the shakes, when he’s tired enough to be honest with himself, he can admit that he’s not sure if he wants him to.

He almost catches up again in St. Louis. Brad calls him from the road, Bluetooth under his helmet, maybe.

Ray’s been thinking about putting a case on the phone Brad left for him. But the look on the hotel manager’s face when Ray pulls out a sparkly iPhone with Hello Kitty emblazoned on the back is honestly kind of amazing.

“Simon says open the door to the balcony,” is Brad’s greeting. Ray can hear the engine, faint in the background.

“Hello to you, too,” Ray says. “I’ve been great, thanks for asking. Thinking about a career change.”

“Simon says go out on the balcony. I approve. You’re wasted there. So many better things you could be doing.”

There’s a wealth of meaning in those words. Ray steps out on the balcony and looks around at the railing, the cheap plastic chair, the potted plant sitting on a pedestal. “Did you get me another present, Bradley? You’re spoiling me.”

“Well, you liked the last one so much, I didn’t want to disappoint.”

Ray rolls his eyes and says something about Brad discovering his secret Sanrio obsession. The truth is, Ray’s kept everything Brad’s left for him, starting with the “Sorry for your loss” card that had shown up the week after Grady, the partner Ray had started this assignment with, up and quit on him. That’s when the game had really started, when Grady had walked out the door of their hotel room in Austin and never come back. HQ sometimes makes noises about assigning someone new, but somehow Ray’s still on his own.

“You’re not touching anything, are you, Ray? Simon didn’t say to touch anything.”

Ray isn’t. He’s standing on a hotel balcony, waiting for instructions from Brad Colbert. He’s past thinking, at this point. “Got my feet up on the railing. This deck chair is mighty uncomfortable.”

“Then you shouldn’t have to move to reach the plant,” Brad says, anticipatory.

Ray lifts a foot. He sets it back down. He is so fucking fucked.

“Simon says go to the plant.” The shiver that goes through Ray has absolutely nothing to do with how pleased Brad’s voice sounds. Ray goes to the plant. “That chair is actually surprisingly comfortable, by the way. Simon says pick up the pot and get what’s underneath.”

Ray catches the phone between his cheek and shoulder so he can pick up the pot.

It’s a key. A Ducati key on a sparkly Powerpuff Girls keychain. Ray holds it up, watching it spin on the chain. He knows without asking what bike it goes to.

“Simon says ‘Happy Birthday, Ray,’” Brad says quietly. He hangs up. Ray sets the pot down carefully. Of course Brad knows when his birthday is. Of course his idea of a present is a key to the bike he’s using to keep running from Ray.

 

*

 

He’s pretty sure he’s gaining on Brad -- if only because, if the police scanner is anything to go by, four of Brad’s different identities have gotten pulled over in the space of six hours -- when he comes over a hill outside of Memphis and almost runs into a fresh accident scene. There’s a semi with a shredded tire halfway off the road, and a quarter mile later there’s a car on the side of the road and then two cars in opposite ditches.

The semi driver’s out of his rig and running toward the car in the ditch closest to him. The car on the shoulder doesn’t look damaged. Two people are getting out of it and running toward the same car the driver’s going toward.

Ray reaches for his cell phone, but the accident’s already being called in over the police radios. He pulls over by the second car. He’s got enough first aid training to be useful until an ambulance gets there.

There’s a woman in the driver’s seat, slumped over the airbag. The door’s smashed partway in, and there are shards of glass all over the front seat from the window. She’s got little cuts on her arms, but other than that Ray can’t see any injuries.

“Hey,” he says. “Hey, can you hear me? Are you okay?”

She opens her eyes and stares at the airbag for long enough that Ray asks again if she’s okay. She nods, a little slow, and he unlocks the door and manages to force it open. He helps her out and sits her down carefully on the grass.

“What happened?” she asks. Her eyes aren’t quite focusing. Probably a concussion. “Oh my god, is everyone else okay?”

Ray looks over his shoulder. The trucker and the couple are helping several teenagers out of the other car. “Everyone looks fine.”

“Are you sure?” she says, eyes welling up with tears. “The guy on the bike, he didn’t have time to stop. He just went flying.”

The trucker’s crossing the street toward them. Ray can hear sirens coming closer. There’s a single tire track curving through the others, leaving the pavement and pointing off over a fence into tall grass.

Ray vaults the fence and almost trips over the bike. It’s lying on its side. It barely even looks damaged. Ray’s vision tunnels in on the scuffed green paint. He forces his gaze away. He keeps going.

Brad’s a few yards further into the field. He’s splayed out on his back, one leg bent under him, bloody scrapes across his hands and his stomach where his shirt’s rucked up. His helmet’s still on. Ray drops to his knees beside him. He fumbles under the helmet until he can press his shaking fingers against Brad’s throat. His pulse is weak, but it’s steady.

“You stupid fuck,” Ray gasps out, twisting Brad’s shirt in his fingers. “You fucking _asshole_ , I’m gonna kill you when you wake up.”

 

*

 

He flashes his badge when the ambulance comes, and they let him follow them in his car. He sits in a plastic chair in the waiting room. He drinks two cups of shitty instant coffee from the machine down the hall. The doctor comes out as he’s getting up to get cup number three.

Brad’s ankle is broken, two of his ribs are cracked, and he has head and back injuries. The head injury is probably the reason he’s still unconscious. The doctor says they won’t know for sure until he wakes up whether the damage to his back will cause any “mobility issues.” That’s the phrase they use, like Ray doesn’t know what it means. Like it needs sugar coating.

Ray rents a motel room and pays in cash. It’s a dump, but he’s not going to spend much time there. The local PD let him pick up Brad’s bike from the impound lot. The paint’s scratched all along one side, but the bike itself purrs like a kitten when he starts it up with his own key. He parks it outside the motel.

On day three, he checks in with HQ. He tells Jo he’s east of Atlanta, following a lead. Jo tells him about the database hack. Someone’s been streaming data from an encrypted government server; by the time they found the source, thousands of classified documents had been copied, and the hacker keeps breaking back in. HQ thinks Colbert’s finally done playing and is making his big move. Fenton thinks he’s in Chicago. They’re sending a team out to track him. Ray’s supposed to pack up and head back to HQ.

Ray says, “Maybe they’ll have better luck than me.” When he hangs up, he walks to the post office down the street and pays cash to mail his work phone to a random Starbucks in L.A. He drives the Denali out into the suburbs south of Memphis and buys two motorcycle helmets at a Sports Authority. He parks the Denali on a random side street, takes a bus back to the hotel, and takes the bike back to the hospital. Then he waits.

He spends most of his time in Brad’s room. Most mornings, he wakes up with a crick in his neck and the steady beep of the monitors filling the silence. He eats most of his meals in the cafeteria and amasses a small collection of random things from the hospital gift shop.

Day six is the day he’s expected back at HQ. He tries not to think about how long it will take them to realize he’s not coming. About whether he’s done enough to keep them from tracking him down.

The morning of day six, he wakes up at the hospital. The nurses just had a shift change. He says hi and heads to his motel to take a shower and change his clothes. He makes a detour on his way back to the hospital and gets a strawberry milkshake at Wiles-Smith. He drinks it at the counter and gets a PB&J to go. At the hospital, the nurse on duty tells him they think Brad is getting closer to waking up.

On day eight, he comes back from a Starbucks run to find Brad sitting up and a doctor watching him wiggle his toes.

“Everything looks good,” the doctor says. “I’ll up your pain meds, but other than that, we’ll just keep an eye on those ribs.”

He leaves. Ray sits down in his usual chair. A nurse comes in and adjusts the tubes leading up to Brad’s IV. Brad watches Ray. The nurse leaves. Brad licks his lips like he’s about to speak, but his eyelids are already getting heavy from the morphine. He clears his throat, looking a little lost.

“Well,” he finally says. “This isn’t how I saw this ending.”

Ray picks up his book. The gift shop actually had a pretty decent selection. He opens it to where a Hello Kitty bookmark (also from the gift shop) is marking his spot. Brad’s still staring at him when he looks up. “Who said anything about an ending?” Ray says.

 

*

 

“How, exactly, did you manage to book a private plane on your sad little FBI salary?” Brad asks. He hooks a hand under his knee and lifts his foot, walking cast and all, up onto the seat across from him.

“Your fake identity number seven managed it, actually.” Ray sits down next to Brad, catching himself on the armrest when the plane dips underneath them.

“Huh,” Brad muses, “I didn’t realize Gary Sherman’s credit limit was this high. And you still haven’t told me where we’re going.”

“Not so fun, is it?” Ray asks, biting his lip to hide his grin. Brad opens his mouth to respond. “Just take your pain meds. You’ll see when we get there.”

“No, no,” Brad says. He reaches out, curling a hand around Ray’s wrist. “That’s not how this works.”

Ray raises an eyebrow, and Brad gives him a look like it should be obvious. “Oh, you want a hint, do you? Okay. There’s a beach. Oh, and your bike’s in the cargo hold.”

“A beach,” Brad echoes. He watches Ray lace their fingers together. “Career change, huh?”

Ray shrugs. “Well, you gotta admit, I was kind of wasted there.”

“You were,” Brad says, voice gone low, and Ray lets himself be pulled into Brad’s lap. “So, somewhere warm. I’m guessing coastal. No extradition treaty. Somewhere in Africa? No, probably an island with --”

Ray cuts him off with a kiss. Brad’s whole body comes up to meet his, like he was waiting for this. For Ray. His hips rock up, and he wraps his arms around Ray’s waist. He lets Ray take control of the kiss, parting his lips for Ray’s tongue. Ray cups Brad’s face in his hands and pulls back to bite lightly at Brad’s lower lip, then harder when Brad makes an eager noise in the back of his throat.

“Still can’t believe I didn’t wake up cuffed to the hospital bed,” Brad says, already a little breathless. He gives Ray a startled look, like he hadn’t meant to say it out loud.

He runs his thumb over Brad’s lower lip. Brad shrinks back a fraction, like he’s still afraid Ray might hold this against him.

“Would you like me to cuff you?” Ray asks. Brad shudders under him, hands tightening on Ray’s hips. Ray thinks about it, about Brad stretched out naked on clean sheets, wrists cuffed to the headboard, hard and desperate. “ _Fuck_. Yeah, we can do that.”

He thumbs Brad’s mouth open and licks inside, grinding his hips down against Brad’s.

“Thought about this,” Brad says between kisses, his voice rough. “Do you remember -- Houston, it was raining, and I called you at three in the morning. Woke you up.”

“I was too tired to be mad at you,” Ray says, pulling Brad’s shirt out of his pants and tugging his own off over his head. Brad cups a hand over the bulge in Ray’s jeans, squeezing. “ _Oh_ , you kept asking me all these random questions.”

“I was jerking off,” Brad says. He presses his face into Ray’s neck. Ray’s cock twitches against Brad’s palm. “I had to keep you talking.”

“Jesus Christ,” Ray gasps. “Are you serious? Are you -- _fuck_ , Brad, you can’t just _say_ things like that, are you trying to kill me?”

“It was the first time you’d slept in forty hours,” Brad says. He tugs open the button on Ray’s jeans as Ray fumbles with the buttons on Brad’s shirt. “And you still kept talking to me. Not even hoping for clues, just -- like you couldn’t hang up. Like I wasn’t the only one.”

He gets Ray’s jeans open just as Ray’s pushing Brad’s shirt back over his shoulders. Ray runs his hands over Brad’s chest and down, thanking God Brad’s still in the sweatpants he’d taken to wearing to make dealing with the cast easier. He has time to untie the drawstring and slide his hand under the waistband before Brad’s wrapping a warm calloused hand around his cock.

They both moan at the feeling, frozen for a moment. Ray slips his hand under the final barrier of Brad’s briefs and then they’re falling into the same rhythm with ease, fast and a little rough. Ray runs his thumb over the head of Brad’s cock on the upstroke and Brad copies him. Ray kneels up over Brad a little, trying to keep his weight off of Brad’s leg.

“Fuck,” Brad moans, wrapping his free hand around the back of Ray’s neck and pulling him in for a kiss. “Ray, _Ray_.”

Ray hasn’t had any company but his own hand for over a year, and Brad’s hand feels so fucking good where it’s wrapped around him. It doesn’t take long before he’s shaking apart and spilling over Brad’s hand, blurting out ridiculous embarrassing things against Brad’s throat. Brad tugs on his hair, tipping Ray’s head back until he can catch his mouth again. Brad kisses him until Ray remembers how to make his hands work again, and then Brad’s gasping against Ray’s mouth and coming.

 

*

 

“Madagascar,” Brad guesses. “No, wait. Indonesia?”

Ray tilts his head back, leaning into Brad’s hand where he’s carding his fingers through Ray’s hair. “Give it up,” he says softly. “You’ll find out when we get there.”

“Why don’t you just tell me now?” Brad coaxes. He turns on his side to face Ray, trailing his other hand down Ray’s chest.

“Does it really matter where we’re going?” Ray asks. He rolls toward Brad, slinging an arm over his waist.

“Of course not,” Brad says. “It matters that you won’t tell me where we’re going.”

“Oh, is that bothering you?” Ray sneaks a hand under the back of Brad’s shirt.

“You’re enjoying this,” Brad accuses.

“I think I deserve a little payback,” Ray says. He presses his hand against the small of Brad’s back, urging him closer.

“Oh you do, do you,” Brad says, pretending to be angry, fighting the grin threatening at the corners of his mouth. “After all these months of suffering, right? You never had any fun at all.”

“Not even a little,” Ray says. He bites his lip and watches Brad’s eyes flick down to his mouth. “But it’s okay. You’ve got plenty of time to make it up to me.”

 

*


End file.
